EDIT: While I don't know if I like getting rid of Hit AND Expertise, having both seems a little redundant to me. Not a fan. For me, Dodge and Parry on gear is just not as big of a deal anymore, but mainly for what Theck said. They don't fill a purpose right now. For all the work they did to simplify tanking numbers, by getting rid of Defense as a number, they undid it all with the changes to Dodge and Parry this expac. And then to look at the values that I see people sporting, and then to look at the boss being able to ignore portions of your dodge/parry and all of your miss... It's just... What's the point? The stats don't seem to have much of a point anymore.

Just updating you as I'm leveling my 3rd DK right now (already got 2 lvl 85 ones!)Rune tap -> 1 min cd, 1 blood rune, 10% hp healVampiric Blood -> Same as beforeChoice: Lichborne (same a before), Anti magic zone (very bad right now), and Purgatory, a passive simil ardent defender (prevents a death, but you need to be healed for the overkill amount within 3 sec or you die)Choice: Death Pact (50% heal, 3 min cd, no cost, requires a pet out (no longer kills the ghoul), also ghoul cd is 2 minutes), death siphon (costs 1 death rune, heals you for an amount dependant on AP), runic siphon (heals for 3% hp per second, 10 RP per second)Bone shield -> Same as before, but no costIcebound Fortitude -> Same as beforeAntimagic Shell -> 75% magic absorb, glyphable to 100%, 45 sec cd, no costDancing Rune Weapon -> Same as beforeArmy -> Same as before, plus extra coolness cause army can now be composed of random undeads

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Just updating you as I'm leveling my 3rd DK right now (already got 2 lvl 85 ones!)Rune tap -> 1 min cd, 1 blood rune, 10% hp healVampiric Blood -> Same as beforeChoice: Lichborne (same a before), Anti magic zone (very bad right now), and Purgatory, a passive simil ardent defender (prevents a death, but you need to be healed for the overkill amount within 3 sec or you die)Choice: Death Pact (50% heal, 3 min cd, no cost, requires a pet out (no longer kills the ghoul), also ghoul cd is 2 minutes), death siphon (costs 1 death rune, heals you for an amount dependant on AP), runic siphon (heals for 3% hp per second, 10 RP per second)Bone shield -> Same as before, but no costIcebound Fortitude -> Same as beforeAntimagic Shell -> 75% magic absorb, glyphable to 100%, 45 sec cd, no costDancing Rune Weapon -> Same as beforeArmy -> Same as before, plus extra coolness cause army can now be composed of random undeads

Thanks for the update. I think if I were a tank, I would probably go with a talent set up of

as my "default" setup, maybe switching to Unholy Blight when there were predictable Add PhasesLichborne when I knew that I could pool RP and there was a Occuthar's lazurs of doom attack (massive attack with little chance of death, but massive healing afterward) Gorefiend's Grasp if I needed to swap a group of stuff to tank, or a fight where there were adds that needed rounded up, and could plan on someone to pull from.

I haven't looked deep into the talents, but there are some of those talents that just don't appeal to my play at all. Plague LeachAMZ (because the little I have read all agree it's awful) Asphyxiate (that's a PvP/Soloing thing if I've ever seen one) Conversion (seems cool, maybe it is, but it interests me the least out of the three on that level) The New BLood TapDesecrated Ground. Seems more PvP to me.

And yes Sagara. AM for Dk's is Death Strike, and Blood Shield that it creates.

Klaudandus wrote:So give us some baseline hit and exp, so we dont hog all the hit/exp gear?

No, I mean get rid of hit/expertise entirely. For everyone. To paraphrase a really good point Hamlet made on twitter a few weeks ago: Reforging was added to help improve the hit/exp system, because otherwise loot that wasn't ideal got ignored. So you have two systems in the game (reforging and hit/exp) designed to make sure you hit the boss 100% of the time.

Is that really very interesting? Or is it just cumbersome? If everyone just loads their character up in AMR or another utility and hits an "optimize" button after every item upgrade, it's not really very interesting.

I think GC (or another blue) has hinted that they're not sure if hit/exp are still interesting stats. I wouldn't mind if they just got rid of them and adjusted rating conversions appropriately. But they'd still have to do something to make dodge/parry more attractive, in any case.

Are you on some sort of cheap drug when you make choices. Tanks care about these things dodge parry block armor HP. Thats all that should matter. It has always been this way in every game ever made. It is the D & D way and the correct way. When you take this focus away you lose your ability to be a lead developer and deserve to be removed from the team.

The answer to your first question is yes. My answer to the rest is: have you seen all of the paladins begging us not to change the way haste works for them because it is both useful and fun? Are they all wrong too? Nah, never mind, don't answer that.

Are you on some sort of cheap drug when you make choices. Tanks care about these things dodge parry block armor HP. Thats all that should matter. It has always been this way in every game ever made. It is the D & D way and the correct way. When you take this focus away you lose your ability to be a lead developer and deserve to be removed from the team.

The answer to your first question is yes. My answer to the rest is: have you seen all of the paladins begging us not to change the way haste works for them because it is both useful and fun? Are they all wrong too? Nah, never mind, don't answer that.

I was almost expecting a response like "I'm sorry, you'll need to phrase your answer in the form of a question."

Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas saw this thread, and wanted share his thoughts on some of the issues you guys have raised:

We think it’s worth noting that many players began their Mists of Pandaria raiding experience with an average item level in the low 460s. Over the course of the past four months, Heroic raiders have seen their average item level climb by as much as 50, while normal mode raid groups that are just getting to Sha of Fear for the first time likely have an average item level that compares to what the cutting-edge guilds had when conquering Heroic Heart of Fear. Getting raid loot along the way has likely felt like a meaningful progression, and the overall damage and healing output of a raid group grows measurably from week to week with each piece of gear looted from a defeated boss. We like that, and we want Throne of Thunder to give players a similar sense of progression.

We could have taken an alternative, more conservative approach, where Throne of Thunder Raid Finder awarded ilvl 496 items and Normal awarded 509 items. A guild that has only done the current normal mode raids, but no Heroics, will then walk into Throne of Thunder with an average item level around 500 (lots of 496 items from Heart of Fear and Terrace, some of them upgraded to 504 with Valor). That doesn’t leave much room to grow – it means that players would only be a few percent stronger when facing Lei Shen at the end of the instance than they were facing Jin’rokh at the start. It also means that when raiders run into a roadblock halfway through the raid, there wouldn’t be much hope that a bit more gear from the next clear would have a significant impact.

Ultimately, we think that raid progression works better, and is more compelling, when there are meaningful increases in power from gear. The effort of downing a boss for the first time is properly rewarded with loot that is attractive to all members of the raid, and the steady increase in player power over the course of progressing through an instance allows us to scale the challenge accordingly. For example, we can now design Lei Shen around the expectation that the average raid group that reaches him will have an item level of nearly 520. The cutting-edge groups that tear through the zone in the first week or two will be comparatively undergeared when they reach him. Without any other changes on our end, item progression means that the same encounter can pose a stern test to a top guild when 5.2 comes out, while still being doable by the groups that only reach the same encounter a couple of months down the line. For example, Heroic Gara’jal was a brutal test of DPS for raiders who faced him last October, but now he feels like part of a smooth progression for groups that are just graduating from normal modes and beginning Heroics.

We’re confident that our planned item levels are not going to skew class balance or degenerate gameplay, and we’re monitoring the performance of all classes and specs in the new gear that will be available in 5.2 and going forward. Stat “inflation” was probably most out of control during the Wrath of the Lich King, but that was an issue with how powerful the gear was that was available as the expansion began perhaps more than any other factor. As a point of comparison, the item level 213 warrior set breastplate that was available in Naxxramas gave a level 80 player 2% critical strike chance; the item level 496 warrior set breastplate available in Heart of Fear gives 1.32% critical strike chance. We’ve learned from the past and carefully left ourselves a lot more room to grow this time around.

In that thread, yes, but discussing what people complain about isn't really the point - people find a way to complain about anything (although Normal and Heroic people finding upgrades in LFR is really bad, so dismissing that complaint is a bit silly, especially when Blizzard already acknowledged it as an issue especially for Heroic people). It's what the Blizzard post is talking about with respect to "stat inflation" (or what they say when they say that they don't expect people in Heroics to be going after LFR loot, even though we know that's not true when it comes to set bonuses/trinkets combined with the fact that some Heroic loot by design is only 502 anyway - AND combined with established history from T13, even though we're not quite dealing with things on the level of OP as the 4-sets back then, the 4-sets in T15 are strong enough for many specs) that's relevant.

While they didn't necessarily have to be so conservative that Normal Thunder would drop a hypothetical 509, having Normal at 513, with Heroic at 526, would certainly have given players "room to grow". The same goes for the layering that looks to be happening with Heroic, Item Upgrade, and now Thunderforging, and it's amplifying the effects that were already predictable.

Well, the fact that even some heroics raiders will desire some gear from the new LFR, either due to RNG, the RL's gf's lust for shineys, bad design on certain items and bonuses, or simply needing to catch up doesn't mean that the path they have chosen, at least for the remainder of this expac, won't work.

However, the stat inflation does need to be dealt with, and in a way that doesn't feel like an overall nerf. Cranking up diminishing returns mid-expansion probably would not go over well, unless it was part of a much larger overhaul.

Considering they are strongly hinting at removing hit and expertise, and maybe even reforging, we might see those larger changes. They would have to crank up the diminishing returns just to compensate for the additional stats on gear that formerly had hit and expertise.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Well, the fact that even some heroics raiders will desire some gear from the new LFR, either due to RNG, the RL's gf's lust for shineys, bad design on certain items and bonuses, or simply needing to catch up doesn't mean that the path they have chosen, at least for the remainder of this expac, won't work.

And this goes beyond that. When they move with a design intent to specifically try and make it so that Heroic raiders shouldn't want to go into LFR, and Heroic raiders with Heroic items do want to go into LFR because of the item level at which LFR items are going to be allocated, it is something you have to expect people to highlight. Crying about other people crying, and trivialising their point of view is just silly.

More, the highlight on just how Normal items jump is definitely staggering. The idea that, say, 509 or 513 Normal items wouldn't have worked in the context of how much a Normal mode raider can go upwards is .... dubious at best.

Considering they are strongly hinting at removing hit and expertise, and maybe even reforging, we might see those larger changes. They would have to crank up the diminishing returns just to compensate for the additional stats on gear that formerly had hit and expertise.

All of their "indications" are that they would like to avoid these types of things in the middle of an expansion. It's going to take the game breaking to convince them to put it in.

Well, as someone pointed out in that thread, they had this model at the end of Cata, so we shouldn't be too surprised.

Normal T12: 378LFR T13: 384Heroic T12: 391

Normal T14: 496LFR T15: 502Heroic T14: 509

So what should T15 LFR be, 485?

If you compress the difference between the gear levels, then you make gear less attractive, and in many cases worse than the prior tier, especially when set bonuses are factored in.

They aren't going to fix the larger problems without a major overhaul, and chances are when they try, they won't get it right anyway. They already talked about this a lot prior to panda, and they backed away from those big changes.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Well, as someone pointed out in that thread, they had this model at the end of Cata, so we shouldn't be too surprised.

Normal T12: 378LFR T13: 384Heroic T12: 391

Normal T14: 496LFR T15: 502Heroic T14: 509

So what should T15 LFR be, 485?

And for one, they said that they would like not to repeat the mistake that they acknowledged they made with T13 LFR, which involved making it attractive for Heroic T12 raiders. One of those was to ensure that end-boss stuff was not higher in LFR (the way Deathwing stuff was 390), but new bonuses and trinkets and the exact same situation (actually worse because everyone is guaranteed to only have 1 trinket be 509, since there's only one trinket in HoF/Terrace combined) and expecting that Heroic raiders won't be interested in 502 gear, given that the situation already happened? That's just a little silly, don't you think?

For the other, you cut that off exactly at the Normal mode version. While Normal T13 was set at 397 in comparison, Normal T15 is set at 522. Even if you say that most Normal raiders will have 2/2 upgraded somehow and everything in 504 (it can't be by design, because not every slot exists in HoF/Terrace, and even with capped Valor every week, that is almost definitely not happening), 504-->522 is a MUCH more massive jump than we've ever seen, AFTER accounting for the inflating that Item Upgrade throws in the wrench.

The reason T13LFR was attractive to heroic T12 raider (especially tanks) was set boni primarily and trinkets - a little bit will creep in in regards to lower ilvl gear being better if better itemized than the higher ilvl gear, the 7 ilvl downgrade from T14H to T15L may come in to play, but with rng and the LFR not being able to be gamed like in T13, I don't consider this a real issue.